In this series on rehearsing using the five senses, we have covered SOUND and now move on to TASTE. Yes, taste. How do we taste the words? We play with the words in our mouths. We practice tasting the words whenever we use technical terms, terms of art, jargon, foreign words, acronyms, and names. It’s also helpful if we find ourselves tripping over certain words or phrases. When in the play, The Other Place,by Sharr White, there was a particularly sticky phrase I could not pronounce without slurring, tripping, or dropping the words. It was a simple phrase, “What good would it have done?” However, I could not get it out of my mouth. In my warm-up before walking onto the stage, I added a practice of…Read on.

It’s easy to leave our audience behind when we slide through important words: names, places, acronyms, jargon, terms of art, foreign words.

Instead, I invite you to savor these words. Let them land. Enjoy them. Even if everyone knows the name, or we assume they do (“Kim Kardashian”), we need to slow down and deliver it with love (KIM KAHRDASHEEEAN). The same applies to names of places…Read on.